It’s been a wild year at the box office for Sandra Bullock, whose report card this decade has been middling at best.

The actress, 45, returned to theaters for the first time in more than two years in June with the romantic comedy “The Proposal,” which went on to become the biggest film of her career (before accounting for inflation), with $164 million in domestic ticket sales. But then came her September stinker, “All About Steve,” which was one of her weakest entries with $34 million in ticket sales. She is pictured at the premiere of the latter film, looking happier than she should have been.

Bullock bounced back this weekend with the sports drama “The Blind Side,” which kicked off with $34.5 million, a personal best. The opening was good enough for a distant No. 2 behind “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” ($140.7 million, but who’s counting?).

Critics and fans embraced the fact-based saga of a Tennessee housewife who takes in a homeless black teenager and turns him into a football hero. John Lee Hancock (”The Rookie”) directed from an adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.” It scored a 70 percent positive rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to 30 percent for the “Twilight” sequel. Exit polling conducted by CinemaScore gave it an exceedingly rare A-plus across all demographics. There’s even talk of an Oscar nod, which would be a first for the two-time Golden Globe nominee.

“The Blind Side” was produced for $29 million by Alcon Entertainment, which specializes in female-skewing fare like the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” movies. The company is financed by FedEx Corp Chairman Frederick W. Smith, and it has a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Pictures.

Bullock cut her undisclosed fee to star in the film, but will share in the profits. “She’ll make quite a bit of money on the movie,” said Broderick Johnson, who runs Alcon with Andrew Kosove.

Johnson predicted the movie would enjoy “a remarkable run” in North America, and reach the $150 million level. But how will it play overseas? American sports dramas have limited foreign appeal, and so the marketing will emphasize the human-interest side. The strategy seemed to work in North America, where women accounted for 55 percent of the audience. Johnson said the international rollout will be worked out next week, but it would likely be spearheaded by launches in the Bullock strongholds of Britain and Germany (her late mother’s homeland).

Fans lined up Thursday night at movie theaters to be among the first to get bitten by the “New Moon” phenomenon, the sequel to last year’s “Twilight.” The vampire romance movie ended up setting a box office record of $26.3 million for those midnight screenings by drawing fans like the ones profiled in our Fan Fare video below.

Who will go to “New Moon?” Lots of teen girls, for sure, but also moms who are into the story, young women and the men they drag along on dates. Those groups are expected to snap up tickets to the tune of about $100 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices this weekend. That’s a lot of howling at the “New Moon.”

“New Moon,” of course, has generated plenty of buzz. Tracking firm Trendrr said that in the last three months, more than 100,000 “New Moon” related videos have been added to YouTube.com. Trendrr also said that on Thursday, Twitter.com received more than 91,000 posts related to “New Moon.”

But despite all that popularity, the Vatican is not on-board. This week, an official with the Catholic Church called the film “nothing more than a moral vacuum with a deviant message.” This despite influential film critic Roger Ebert saying that the “Twilight Saga is an extended metaphor for teen chastity.” Who to believe?

For the uninitiated, “New Moon” is the second installment in the “Twilight” franchise based on the books by Stephenie Meyer. In the books and the movies, high school student Bella Swan (Kristen Stewartin the films) falls in love with the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). But in “New Moon,” there’s another boy competing for Bella’s affection, and that is werewolf Jacob Black, played by 17 year-old actor Taylor Lautner, photographed above at right. As a result, some fans going to “New Moon” are on Team Edward and some are on Team Jacob. As if any fan support is going to change which way Bella’s vampire-loving heart really leans.

Check out the video below.

In an age when celebrities guard their privacy like gold, Jason Segel goes a different route. On Wednesday night, the “How I Met Your Mother” star stopped by a Swell Season show in Los Angeles, where he gave an impromptu performance and sang out what he said was his phone number, proclaiming that he wanted to use his “celebrity status to make love to a Swell Season fan tonight.”

Click here to see a video of the comedic performance, complete with Swell Season pianist/singer Marketa Irglova holding up a placard with Segel’s supposed number, with its Syracuse, New York, area code. Segel’s song featured lyrics that asked concertgoers to call him for a hook-up, but only if they’re “disease free,” and he made liberal reference to his full frontal nude scene in last year’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” which he said involved “no special effects.”

Before the song, Swell Season singer Glen Hansard introduced Segel by saying that he had bumped into the actor at a hotel bar, along with Paul Rudd, Segel’s co-star from the movie “I Love You, Man.” Hansard, who himself starred in a movie, the 2007 film “Once,” in which he and Irglova played struggling musicians trying to make one great album, said at the concert that he, Segel and Rudd had engaged in a bout of drinking, and things got “properly hairy.” Supposedly, the Segel performance resulted from that.

For the record, this is not Segel’s first musical foray, check out this link to him performing a comic serenade on Craig Ferguson’s late night talk show.

But it made sense for Segel to get on stage at a Swell Season show, since the band (pictured at right last year at a show in Prague) is all about celebrating the musical abilities of everyday folks, which was also a big theme in their film “Once.”

On nearly every song at his set at L.A.’s Wiltern Theatre, Hansard had the crowd sing along, not only inviting them to chime in but coaching them on how to do it. When one woman in the audience took the lead harmony vocal on one song, Hansard called her “beautiful.”

So in the spirit of amateur music-making, Segel sat at the piano and said he had asked Swell Season how to write a song, and that Irglova told him to “include as much personal information” as possible. Hence, the lyric with his phone number in it.

It got the Wiltern audience laughing uncontrollably. But the real question is, did it work for Segel that night? Is there anybody out there who, ahem, knows for certain?

Wednesday’s So You Think You Can Dance results show opened with a trademark Wade and Amanda Robson group number that drew an enthusiastic response from the judges and audience alike, but it wasn’t long before everyone got down to unpleasant business. There were some small surprises and the judges were unanimous in their decisions.

Karen Hauer and Kevin Hunte’s Broadway routine disappointed judges on Tuesday and was the only dark spot of the evening, so it was no surprise the pair found themselves dancing for their lives.

Victor Smalley and Channing Cooke executed a strong Tyce Diorio jazz number, but viewers may have agreed with judge Adam Shankman who found the Bobby McFerrin song choice detracted him from connecting with the performance.

Mollee Gray and Nathan Trasoras were back in the game after last week’s disastrous salsa, so it came as a surprise their pop-jazz dance put them among the bottom three couples. Judge Nigel Lythgoe, who called on Nathan to live up to his potential as “one of the best dancers” they’ve ever had on the show, speculated that their poor showing may have been backlash from last week.

In the end, the judges whittled it down to personality and growth.

Channing always performed under the radar and this week, her technical strength could not outshine the personality and charisma the judges saw in Karen.

Kevin, who often found himself standing in Karen’s shadows as well, could not hide his awkwardness with other dance genres from the judges. In the end, his lack of growth relative to Victor’s cut his competition short.

What did you think of the viewers’ and judges’ decision?

(Top) Karen Hauer (L) and Kevin Hunte (R) perform a Broadway routine choreographed by Spencer Liff. © 2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Mathieu Young/FOX

(Middle) Nathan Trasoras (L) and Mollee Gray (R) perform a Pop Jazz routine choreographed by Laurieann Gibson. © 2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Mathieu Young/FOX

(Bottom) Victor Smalley (L) and Channing Cooke (R) perform a Jazz routine choreographed by Tyce Diorio. © 2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Mathieu Young/FOX

(writing, reporting and video by Frank Simons)

With Hollywood glitz usually reserved for the launch of a Star Ship — namely the Enterprise — Paramount Home Entertainment on Tuesday released director J.J. Abrams’ recent re-boot of “Star Trek” on DVD and Blu-ray. It’s little wonder that Paramount pulled out all the stops to “premiere” the DVD. The movie was a big hit this past summer ($384 million at box offices), and Abrams is a star director having created “Alias” and “Lost” for TV and directed “Mission: Impossible III.”

So, Monday night at Los Angeles’ historic Griffith Observatory, high above the galaxy that is Hollywood, Paramount threw a star-studded bash the likes this planet had never seen for a “Star Trek” DVD. Abrams and many of the film’s stars beamed onto the red carpet just steps away from the Observatory’s Leonard Nimoy (that’s Spock to you older Trekkies) Event Horizon Theater. They were all smiles when discussing their big hit this past summer, but remained tight-lipped about details of the upcoming sequel.

“I haven’t made any decisions,” was the oft repeated answer to questions regarding a possible release date, if Abrams was officially on board to direct, and whether or not the film would be released in 3-D. Although Abrams did say he was “open” to the possibility of a 3-D sequel, one thing he was 100 percent certain about was that there would not be a “Directors Cut” of the current film.

Other members of the new “Star Trek” universe were more willing to discuss how they wanted events to unfold ahead — in the 23^rd Century. Zoë Saldana (Uhura) “wouldn’t mind having a couple Spock-Babies,” John Cho wanted his Sulu character to learn more martial arts and possibly become “a poet,” and Karl Urban would like McCoy to say “I’m a Doctor, not a Scientologist!” As for more Spock, Leonard Nimoy told us, “there’s more Spock to play – and Zachary Quinto is going to do it.”

Outside the Observatory under the stars, Green Orion Slave Girls served Romulan Ale and “Red Matter” (the mysterious power source used so villainously by Eric Bana’s “Nero” in the film), welcoming revelers to party like it’s 2258.1999.

Paramount is confident — and they should be based on the film’s box office — that DVD and Blu-ray sales will take this film’s profits where no “Star Trek” DVD has gone before. The two disc DVD and three disc Blu-ray Special Edition have hours of additional material, so there’s something to please even the grumpiest Klingon. Features include behind-the-scenes featurettes, nine deleted scenes, a “gag” reel, director and creative team commentary, and many other tribble-sized bits of fun. But the party was anything but tribble small. Click below for some video of the event, but pardon us for some of the shaky video, we were having difficulties juggling notes and pens and microphones and cameras.

The Daily Mail calls the eagerly anticipated second instalment in the Twilight franchise “disastrous” and “one long pain in the neck“, and gives it just one star out of five compared with four stars for the first film. The Daily Mirror is kinder, saying the movie “effortlessly sweeps you along in a swirl of intoxicating passion.” It goes on to say the film, which hits US and UK theatres on Friday, works better as a love story than as a supernatural adventure.

Whoever you believe in the coming days, when the already speeding Twilight hype machine goes into overdrive, critics’ opinions are likely to have little impact on how the film fares at the ticket booths. The Twilight franchise based on the hugely popular novels by U.S. author Stephenie Meyer is being touted as the next Harry Potter, i.e. billions of box office bucks in the next few days.

As in the original, British actor Robert Pattinson plays Edward, the brooding bloodsucker who befriends Bella, played by Kristen Stewart. And Taylor Lautner is set to become the next heartthrob for his portrayal of American werewolf Jacob Black.

Catherine Hardwicke’s original Twilight movie made $384 million at the global box office. Few would bet against the sequel beating that tally, no matter what the critics think.

After some harsh words last week for dancers and audiences alike, it was a veritable love fest on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance Tuesday night as judges gave high praise to nearly all the dancers.

Ashleigh Di Lello and Jakob Carr opened the evening’s competition with a strong Tabitha and Napoleon hip-hop routine. Judges were quite confidant Jakob will secure a spot in the top 10. Ashleigh, however, almost didn’t make it into the top 20 and had elicited speculation whether she’d be riding Jakob’s coattails into the top 10. This week she proved she could hold her own and contribute equally to the partnership: “I could name a number of people who didn’t give you a chance, who are now eating their words,” said executive producer Nigel Lythgoe — judge Adam Shankman admitted he was one of the former doubters.

After placing in the bottom three couples last week, Ashleigh’s husband Ryan and his partner Ellenore Scott were given a second chance and had the other standout routine of the evening, a beautiful contemporary number choreographed by season 2 contestant, Travis Wall. For a few moments, the judges almost forgot this was a dance show as they raved about Travis’ choreography work on SYTYCD. They were equally enthusiastic about the dancers, calling Ryan “the best ballroom dancer that has ever done contemporary.”

“I am pretty sure right now, you are going to end up with your wife in the top 10″, Adam said.

Join us live on Twitter @Reuters_Fanfare for the east coast airing of the show.

(Top) Ashleigh Di Lello (L) and Jakob Karr (R) perform a Hip Hop routine choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon Dumo. © 2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Mathieu Young/FOX

(Bottom) Ryan Di Lello (L) and Ellenore Scott (R) perform a Contemporary routine choreographed by Travis Wall. © 2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Mathieu Young/FOX

She made history at the Country Music Awards last week, is the biggest selling female artist in the United States this year, and she comes magically to life in December’s edition of InStyle in the first ever 3D magazine cover.

But how good is teen sensation Taylor Swift at actual singing?

Not so great, if the growing amount of chat on the Web is to be believed. The higher her public profile rises, the louder are the whispers that Swift often sings flat in live performances.

Some country music fans were particularly miffed at Swift’s trophy for female vocalist of the year at the CMA awards in Nashville last week, where the 19-year-old also became the youngest artist ever to win the coveted Entertainer of the Year award.

“Flat, off key, and just really bad! Taylor Swift is no Reba, Martina, or Carrie, these are the real vocalists. TS must have some real geniuses in the studio to fix that crap,” wrote one admitted Rebafan on the Great American Country web site.

And country fans are not alone. Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker wrote in a blog that Swift was a “terrific songwriter” but described her voice as “thin, and sometimes as wobbly as a newborn colt.”

With the American Music Awards coming up this weekend, and Swift’s leading six nominations, all eyes will again be on the young star whose rise to fame has been meteoric over the past two years.

Will the ears of the public also be listening a little bit harder?

She broke Chase’s heart and even her manipulative boss House seemed moved — for a second, anyway — when Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) walked away from both the diagnostics team and from Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Monday’s broadcast of the medical drama “House”.

Cameron’s presumed departure — although you never can tell with “House” — comes just a few weeks after she and on-screen husband Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer) made their long-hoped-for return to the central cast of the show after being sidelined for a couple of seasons to the  bowels of the fictional hospital.

Viewers seemed to welcome more screen time for the blond duo (who were once engaged in real life) . “House” is getting a hefty 16.6 million viewers on average per episode this season — a 17 percent increase on the same time last year, according to Nielsen ratings figures.

So is this just another smart plot twist or is it really good-bye for Dr. Cameron?

Turns out that the actress is not even sure herself.  “I don’t think anyone really knows…they’re always just a couple of episodes ahead, and [executive producer]  David Shore has always been very true to the writing of the characters and what he believes them to be,” Jennifer Morrison told  reporters at a Hollywood event on Monday.

“I’m still a series regular, technically. I really don’t know. All I know is that I don’t know. And they keep making it very clear to me that I don’t know,” Morrison added.

Meanwhile, “13″ (Olivia Wilde) and Taub are back on House’s team, as are  Chase and Foreman.

But what’s Chase without Cameron?  And can “13″ ever take Cameron’s place?  And what can the show’s producers be thinking of?

New York band The Strokes’ 2001 debut “Is This It” topped music magazine NME’s album of the decade poll, beating British rockers The Libertines’ first album “Up The Bracket” into second. The result was decided by a panel of musicians, producers, writers and record label bosses. Here is a rundown of NME’s Top 20 from the “Noughties”:

1. The Strokes – ‘Is This It’; 2. The Libertines – ‘Up The Bracket’; 3. Primal Scream – ‘Xtrmntr’; 4. Arctic Monkeys – ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’; 5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Fever To Tell’; 6. PJ Harvey – ‘Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea’; 7. Arcade Fire – ‘Funeral’; 8. Interpol – ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’; 9. The Streets – ‘Original Pirate Material’; 10. Radiohead – ‘In Rainbows’

11. At The Drive In – ‘Relationship Of Command’; 12. LCD Soundsystem – ‘The Sound Of Silver’; 13. The Shins – ‘Wincing The Night Away’; 14. Radiohead – ‘Kid A’; 15. Queens Of The Stone Age – ‘Songs For The Deaf’; 16. The Streets – ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’; 17. Sufjan Stevens – ‘Illinoise’; 18. The White Stripes – ‘Elephant’; 19. The White Stripes – ‘White Blood Cells’; 20. Blur – ‘Think Tank’